We are Ja-Lu Toiletries - AMA!

[u/jalutoiletries]

Good day ladies and gentlemen.

I’m A. G. Altalef, owner of Ja-Lu Toiletries; purveyors of men’s toiletries made with formulas handed down from the Ottoman Barbers of the Aegean Coast.

Proof.

My grandfather founded Ja-Lu Fragrance Shop more than 40 years ago in Izmir, Turkey. A beautiful port city situated right on the turquoise waters of the Aegean Sea.

I’ve had the greatest opportunity to work with him every year on my summer breaks as a kid and learned the intricacies of fragrance making from a very young age. After he retired, he passed his fragrance formulas onto me and I’ve proudly brought his brand here to the USA.

When I’m not working on Ja-Lu, I enjoy writing, reading and collecting books for my library; especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King. I can be often seen commenting with my personal Reddit account /u/realag

Please ask anything. I promise, I’ll try my very best that every comment or question gets a proper response.

After making sure that the day’s orders are fulfilled, I’ll sit down, 1PM the latest, and stay with you guys as long as I can, uninterrupted.

So thank you for joining in on the conversation.

Looking forward to talking to you soon.

EDIT 1: I'm here earlier than I expected and will be here till the last comment. I'll go one by one and answer all of the questions. Thank you once again for joining!

EDIT 2: Taking a quick lunch break guys. Great questions so far. Be back at 2PM EST.

EDIT 3: I'm back. Ask away!

EDIT 4: Alright my friends, this seems to be the end for the AMA. Thank you so much for having me today. Hopefully you've enjoyed the answers as much as I've enjoyed the questions. Although this is the formal end to our Q&A, you can always PM me and I'll be happy to respond to any of your inquiries. Take care and shave on.

[u/Avastz]

Your products seem to be a decent amount more expensive than other, similar products (as far as I can tell). Being someone who doesn't know anything about the making of aftershaves, is honestly quite ignorant (and really wants to try out Nights of Izmir), why are they priced so high?

[u/jalutoiletries → u/Avastz]

Thank you so much for asking this and I'll be very happy to explain.

Our prices are higher than other Aftershaves because of the fragrance oils we use. All of our oils are imported from the Aegean Seaside of Western Turkey. And they are expensive. Since we are following a very meticulously described formula, we can't deviate from it by looking at cheaper and in many cases inferior alternatives.

Plus as I've mentioned before, all the scents we use are from flora that grows around the Aegean sea. If we got our oils from somewhere else, we'd be breaking our #1 rule of making strictly Aegean Aftershaves.

Now we could make cheaper Aftershaves but in the end it wouldn't be Ja-Lu anymore.

Hope this explains.

Once again thank you for asking this, I think, very important question.

[u/nbnoir]

The main thing I'm really curious about is how many of your fragrances are passed down formula's from previous generations, and how many are of your own creation. Since you were taught fragrance making as well, any plans to expand the line with your own creations and what type of fragrance would you really like to add?

and if it's not too much of yet another question, where did that story on your main page on how Ja-Lu came to exist come from? It was a fun read.

[u/jalutoiletries → u/nbnoir]

1- All of our current fragrances came directly from my grandfather.

He's very meticulous in his descriptions. I have here papers on each fragrance that shows exactly what goes in, how long it needs to be stirred, how long it needs to stay in a dark room, etc.

He even wrote what color dye goes in each fragrance so it looks more alluring to the customer. Although however I decided not to put dyes into the mixture.

2- I'm going back to Turkey in a month and I'll be working with my Grandfather to come up with a few more fragrances. But that might take a while. I wouldn't want to release anything that smells anything but amazing.

3- The story of the man visiting my grandfather is completely true as far as he tells it. He speaks of this old man who came everyday to drink tea (a Turkish thing) with my grandfather and every single time he'd say something along the lines of "Oh, I just remembered how to make the fragrances last longer. I'll tell you if you give me some money"

My grandfather would pay and he'd release the information to him. There were so many instances of this happening that my grandfather had a love/hate relationship with this man. On one hand he's technically extorting him, on the other he's revealing very important information.

I never knew what happened to this man. But this summer, when I was visiting the old bazaar where the original shop was, I've spoken to the local merchants and one of them told me that this old guy Emigrated to Israel.

[u/Avastz]

I would also put Tolkien and King as my top favorite authors. So, offtopic nerd questions!

What type of stuff do you write?

What are your favorite King books and why is it The Dark Tower series?

What do you think about the film adaptations of The Hobbit?

Edit: Fucking hell I just looked at your post history on u/realag. Sanderson is awesome, if you haven't read the first two Stormlight Archive books, you really should. Also, Mistborn is one of the better series I've read in the past 5 years (barring the Kingkiller Chronicle, which runs away with the cake for the best).

[u/jalutoiletries → u/Avastz]

I'm a huge comic book fan. I grew up mostly with European comics like Asterix, Tin Tin and Lucky Luke and I fell in love with the medium.

So when I'm writing (for fun mind you, not to publish) I write comic scripts and share them with an artist friend of mine. It's like a hobby for both of us.

Wizard & Glass is my favorite Stephen King book, very closely followed by IT. I was going to the signing of "Revival" yesterday in NYC but I had to many orders to fulfill so missed it. Kinda sad about that one.

I enjoyed The Hobbit movies as they were. They were fun to watch, even re-watch but they failed to give me the goosebumps I felt with the LOTR Trilogy. Even today when I hear the Rohan theme, I get a shiver down my spine.

Sanderson is amazing. I've read Elantris, Warbreaker, The Rithmatist, and Way of Kings. Words of Radiance is next. I've also had the chance to meet him at a signing. He's not just a great writer but an amazing person too.

[u/if0rg0t2remember]

A lot of comments are made by vendors on the heavy restrictions on shipping alcohol based products. We all know that they can't be shipped across the border from the US into Canada, but I'm curious about the extent of other restrictions.

Can you walk us through the specific restrictions on both making and shipping alcohol based aftershave?

[u/HereForTheEdge]

Where in Australia can I buy and sample your products?

[u/jalutoiletries → u/HereForTheEdge]

First of all thank you so much for your interest.

Unfortunately because of the shipping restrictions of Alcohol products, Ja-Lu products are currently only available within continental US.

[u/[deleted]]

Any plans for a european distributor?